Everything I know about…producing customer case studies

21st March 2021

If you’ve ever worked in marketing, or have owned a company, you’ll know it’s notoriously difficult to produce customer case studies. Customers are often busy with their own roles that making space for a supplier to interview them isn’t always a top priority.

Luckily, in almost every SaaS company I’ve worked in customer case studies have been a huge priority. As a result, I’ve picked up a bit of a process for getting customers to want to be in case studies (written, video and in-person), and how to produce them as part of your SaaS company’s story.

Below is everything I know about producing customer case studies in SaaS (but most advice is totally transferable if you wanted to apply it to your own industry). 

How to get customers to agree to case studies

1. Research the customer first and read up on their back story

The great thing about SaaS is that there’s often an audit trail of communication with customers. This means you can dive into your CRM or comms tool, such as Intercom, locate the customer you wish to target and read about their challenges and solutions.

Before you reach out to any customer you should see what (if any) questions or problems they have had about your product in the past. This way you can tailor your questions, and avoid awkwardness if they’re having any type of ongoing frustration.

2. Make cost to entry low

When reaching out to customers, I’ve always tried to keep the cost to entry as low as possible. Rather than asking for an hour, could you just grab 30 minutes? If the case study is going to be in person, could you ask them to meet you before work or for lunch, so it’s not taking up a slot out of their day?

Get creative and remember that you don’t always have to stick to the traditional model. Today, most of us have a voice memo or recording function on our phone (or there are apps you can download such as Otter.ai). So long as you can record the conversation to refer back to later, you can be flexible about how and where you record.

3. Offer something in return to the customer

If you need to get an in-depth customer case study, rather than just a quick testimonial, you could be asking for at least 2-3 hours of your customer’s time – potentially more, if you want to film them in a video case study.

For this reason, I’ve always tried to look at what we can offer the customer in return. Yes, sometimes an Amazon voucher goes down well but, actually, I think that can be a bit of a cheap perk. 

Instead, I’ve generally tried to pair the customer case study with something that’s product or company-related and that will specifically benefit your type of SaaS customer. This might be:

Product session

Alongside the case study, you could use this session with your client to also offer them a bespoke product session. This could be a chance for them to ask you specific questions, get more detail about a new feature, or for you to give them some free strategy about how to get more out of your SaaS product.

If you don’t have the product knowledge to be able to do this yourself, see if you can pair up with someone from your sales or services team who can step in after the case study is complete.

Early feature access

If you regularly release new features you could provide early access to the customer and use the case study session as a chance to demo them the new feature. This type of exclusive “early access” will hopefully make your customer feel special, and gives you an excuse to get them on a call or meeting so that you can share access to the new feature. 

Event, podcast or conference

Another opportunity for case study content occurs any time your customers are attending an event, or if they’re connecting with you on a project such as a podcast.

Recording a podcast is a great opportunity to not only discuss your customer’s background and company, but to also gather testimonials or insight into how they use your product and how this has solved a problem for them. Of course, podcasts should be editorial and not self-promotional, but a mix of the two can work when done well. 

Similarly, at an event or conference (world situation permitting), you could set up a room and schedule drop-in sessions. Having this available for the entirety of the event, and inviting customers to come and give you their feedback, is a great way to get buy-in more easily. 

4. Make it easy for the customer to book

To increase your chances of success, make every part of the case study process as easy as possible. Keep your email short and employ a tool, like Calendly, to allow your customers to book a slot without the back and forth.

Here’s the type of case study email I would usually send (feel free to use this as a template if it’s useful!)

Hi [Name],

It’s Beth from [Company] here. I wondered if you’d be open to working with us to produce a case study for our website on your use of [product]. We think it would be really interesting for other customers to hear how [personalised reason].

I know how precious your time is, so I’d also love to pair this with a quick sneak preview of [new product] that we’re about to launch. This would help you to [solve problem] and we’d be keen to hear any early feedback that will help us to make this even more useful for you. 

Does that sound like something you’d be willing to give up an hour of your time for? If so, you can book in for the call here. 

Really hope to speak with you soon.

Many thanks,

Beth

If recording virtually, ensure the details such as Google Meet or Zoom are on the calendar invite, be on time and always, always, hit “record” before you begin so that you have a copy of the interview to refer back to later.

Lastly, if you have multiple customers in the same area and the current situation permits it, you could consider organising a “customer case study tour” where you have various slots they can book within a week or a few days. I wrote about how I organised a customer case study tour when I was at ScreenCloud and it ended up being a huge success.

How to produce a great customer case study

So you’ve got one, or multiple, customers to agree to doing a case study with you. Great! Now you just have to work out how to produce something amazing. Easier said than done, right? So often we fall into the trap of producing a bog-standard case study which doesn’t really provide value to us or our future customers. Spending a bit of time thinking about how you’ll produce the case study definitely helps. My tips are:

1. Choose a narrative angle

At base level, a case study sounds something like this:

“This is the best product I’ve ever used” – Customer

That may make you and your CEO feel good, but is it really offering anything of value to future customers who, really, this case study is for? I doubt it.

Slack are a good example of a company who use editorial hooks for case studies
(source: slack.com)

Instead, I like to approach case studies from a journalistic perspective by thinking about what the angle or the hook is for the story. What makes this customer’s use and perspective interesting? Is it volume of product use, or is it that they use the product in a unique way? Were they the first to use your product? Have they used every single other product in your industry and chosen yours as the best? In every customer case study there’s a unique angle to be had, so it’s your job to find it.

2. Put the customer at ease

In a best case scenario your customer is a confident speaker and can wax lyrical about your product with ease. However this isn’t always the case. If we assume that your customer may not be confident – especially in a filming scenario – you should take the time to put your customer at ease.

A fantastic Video Producer I worked with at ScreenCloud, called Tony, always advised me to build a bit of a rapport with the customer while he set up the equipment. This was a 5-10 minute window where I would ask them about topics unrelated to the case study in order to put them at ease. This might have been how long they’ve worked at the company, what their team setup is like, or even what their favourite restaurant was in the area. By the time the study started, the customer would be far more comfortable, and this allowed me to get the best from their interview without them freezing up.

3. Record and transcribe the interview

Always, always, record the interview. Be sure to let the customer know you’re doing this, but that the transcription won’t be sent anywhere. Recording a session allows you to be present during the interview and make notes of any questions or points you want to come back to, rather than furiously trying to write down what they say verbatim. 

4. Follow-up for images

Images are often essential to help bring case studies to life but, again, can be difficult to obtain from the customer. Try to get them to send images as soon as possible while the case study is still fresh in their mind. Better yet, take your own while visiting or even as screenshots from the video footage if you’ve captured this.

5. Write up the case study and choose your format

How you write up the case study and the format will make a difference. When reviewing SaaS case study examples I found that there’s a certain type of format that’s used – shown here in case studies from Chargebee, Zendesk and Proposify.

This type of case study format seems to include:

In terms of style, many SaaS case studies are written in a mix format of narrative that is interspersed with quotes and sometimes statistics. The design of the page will largely depend on how your website is built and the designs available, but short sections of text scattered with images, stats and quotes can help to make it easily scannable, which is really all your audience will be trying to do. 

6. Achieve sign-off

It’s good practice to get your customer to sign-off the study once it’s ready to publish. However, in the past I’ve often found this can be a bit of a sticking point. It can either sit in their inbox for weeks, or they begin to involve HR or Legal teams at the last minute, who may then decide to pull the plug.

To prevent this, be firm but friendly about your deadline to get the case study live. You could also send them a small follow-up gift or token afterwards, thanking them for their time, which helps to keep the study fresh in their mind.

Lastly, it’s good practice to bring this up before you book in with a customer. A simple “hey, will you need anyone internally to sign-off on the case study before it is published?” can help you to work out if there’s going to be any red tape that may ruin your efforts. 

Over to you…

That’s everything I know about producing SaaS customer case studies. Hopefully there were some useful tips to ease your production process. Let me know any questions you have (or share your own ideas with me) on beth@bethgladstone.com